The Nature of Magic
by Tapix
Summary: (For "In the Lake of the Woods" by Tim O'Brien.) They get seven days. Seven days, and then she's gone, and he has a guilt on his conscious and he doesn't know why.


i... had to writ this for a school assignment, so i figured i might as well put this up here :3 idk i think its pretty good

* * *

Whistling.

There was a shrill whistling noise, and Sorcerer wanted it to stop. It was interrupting his focus.

He stood there, in the kitchen, at the stove, and the tea kettle was whistling, an alarm telling him to wake up, this was a dream, this wasn't real. He knew that all he'd have to do was reach out and turn off the stove, and remove the kettle, and he'd get what he wanted. He'd get the silence. But then he'd be alone again, with only his thoughts. Or were they even his?

_Kill Jesus._ The words echoed around in his brain, and he giggled a little. How wonderful it was to step outside of the bounds of human decency, to think something so blasphemous that half of the world's bystanders would be enraged with him for just considering it. "Kill Jesus," he said aloud, and he liked the way it rolled off his tongue, and made him float in the air, the magic words that kickstarted his sorcery.

The whistling still hadn't stopped.

He grabbed at the teapot angrily, with something of a purpose. The smell of boiled plants wafted in from the living room, and he fastidiously ignored it as he strolled down the hall, to his bedroom. He opened the door and looked in at the sleeping form in the bed. She was so peaceful. He walked to the side of the bed and stroked her hair. "Kath, my Kath," he murmured, and he was a magician, about to make her disappear in a puff of steam.

He opened the tea kettle over her head and watched as it poured down onto her, muttering, "Kill Jesus, kill everyone," under his breath.

The scalding water cascaded over her face, pouring off in rivulets, steam rising around her. She didn't react, not that he noticed. He was too busy reveling in his extreme ingenuity, his ability to avoid the wrath of God, even in the face of his blasphemy. He ran outside and yelled "Kill Jesus!" to the night sky, and jumped into the lake, fully clothed.

In her bed, Kathy disappeared.

* * *

He woke the next day, as John, mostly. The bed was wet, and very empty. He figured she was out for a walk.

When she didn't come back, he knew she had gone, perhaps run off in the night, scared shitless by his raving. He understood. He wouldn't have stayed if it were him in the bed and her pouring hot water over the sheets, caressing people who weren't even there.

He decided that staying in the house would be better than nothing; there was no reason for him to leave, and she would be able to find him if she decided to come back. He stood in the bedroom for a time, in front of the vanity, looking at the mirror but not really seeing it, instead seeing that mirror inside his head, the one where he could do magic tricks and they would be real, and his father was still alive, and now and then he caught a glimpse of Kathy, his Kath, smiling at him with beautiful tanned skin and perfect hair and perfect eyes. Every time he saw her he'd get a pang of regret, and something else, something like sorrow, or guilt, maybe – though he wasn't quite sure what for.

There were plenty of things to be guilty about, he supposed. But he examined each one, and determined for a fact that that was not the reason for what he was feeling – what, then, was he guilty of?

He would ponder it for a while, then decide it wasn't worth worrying over. And he'd go back to his mirror.

At one point, he found himself walking through the woods around the lake, and he tripped over something – a large rock, by the looks of it. He did a circle around it, to see if it held a hidden meaning, but it was just a rock, and he was just a man. He shrugged and turned back toward the cottage, the setting sun casting a shadow across the ground.

He entered through a window, just to make things different for once. Walking into the kitchen, he set the teapot on the stove and turned away, not bothering to actually turn it on. "Later," he told it, as if it could hear him.

He was halfway to the bedroom when he noticed something, something that he felt like he should have noticed before because it was so glaringly obvious: a staircase, leading up. Looking from side to side, he wondered if this was just another trick, if Sorcerer had made them appear; but when he looked back, they were still there, beckoning him to follow. He took one uncertain step on the wooden stairs, and they groaned like they were made of hundred-year-old wood, but held.

At the top, there was a mirror, bolted onto the door. He could see his father's face clearly. "Don't go in there, son," he warned, very unlike his character. "Don't open that door." John considered the options. Would his father love him if he did as he asked? "Don't do it," his dad said again, and John pushed the door open. His father had always wanted him to be more of an active spirit, hadn't he?

Inside it was cobwebs and dust and forgotten memories. He inhaled some of the decay and coughed, a great hacking thing that had him clutching a wall for support. There was nothing in the room, except for a table at the other end, with a stack of paper on it. Shielding his eyes, John walked across the room, which seemed like it was spinning around him, wavering and refracting off of the mirror in his mind. He knew then that he had walked across this room before, and he almost knew what he'd find when he reached the table.

The stack of papers was a newspaper, dated five years previously. The headline: "Woman found drowned in lake."

Underneath it was a picture of Kathy, with burns across her face.

John backed away quickly, and tripped over nothing, falling, falling towards the floor. The impact shattered his mirror, and his father's voice faded, an "I told you so" whispered as he disappeared. The room was spinning, but solid at the same time, and there was whistling in John's ears, and he was gliding, out of the room, out of the house, out of the world, and he was yelling – loud, obscene things – in a voice that wasn't even his, and there was the Lake of the Woods, and she was drowning in it, burn marks on her face and hands, and there he was at the trial, and he was acquitted, and there was the whistling in his ears again, and would it just stop.

* * *

An indeterminate amount of time later, he woke up in his bed, and it was dry, and the tea kettle was whistling on the stove. There was the sound of it being removed, and then the pouring of hot water into two cups.

She walked into the room, and said, "It's the snakes, John. They've eaten each other up."

He nods, understanding. "One plus one is zero."

They spend seven days together, and in the end, he makes her disappear in a puff of steam.


End file.
